


Dinner Buffet, and a Fanta

by Eiiri



Series: The Buffet [1]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Eddie Really Needs To Wear a Bluetooth Headset All the Time, Gen, Going Out In Public With A Symbiote Is Hard, Minimum Wage Is Not Enough For This, OC narrator - Freeform, Slice of Life, This Poor Waitress, Weirdly Wholesome?, all you can eat buffet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 06:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiiri/pseuds/Eiiri
Summary: An unfortunate waitress once witnessed what happens when you take an alien symbiote to an all you can eat buffet.  This is her story.





	Dinner Buffet, and a Fanta

It was a pretty slow Wednesday night when this guy walked into the buffet restaurant where I work. Wednesday is pretty much always slow, but the weather this night was absolute shit, cold and rainy, so at least half of anybody who _might_ have come to dinner stayed home instead. This guy didn't look like much, little damp, vaguely familiar inthe “maybe you were in one episode of Law and Order, or maybe I went to school with your sister” kinda way, but nothing remarkable. Definitely not someone who looked like the buffet price was gonna be worth it for him. Little secret corporatedoesn't want you to know: unless you are literallya high school football team, or like six-foot-something military, or so overweight/such a frequent overeater that your body has given up trying to tell you that you're full, the buffet is a rip off. And if you're that last one, for your own sake, you probably shouldn't come here.

Anyway. This guy was none of those. He came and sat in my section, I got his drink order—he hemmed and hawed a little before saying Fanta, I didn't think anything of it—thenhe got up to get his food. When I got back with his Fanta is when I started noticing things were a little bit weird. In the not very long it takes to walk over, fill a cup with soda, and walk back, he'd gotten two plates totally filled from the nearest buffet bar, one of them every kind of meat out on that bar piled together with the mac'n'cheese with a sweet potato balanced precariously on top, the other all tater tots. Don't get me wrong, I like tater tots, but this was a lot of tater tots.

He was just getting back to his table when I brought his drink. He looked at me, glanced around, nodded once, and said, “Thanks.”

Iput ona service smile and gavea, “You're welcome,” before I headed to check on my other tables.

Most people acting that shifty are there to steal from the buffet. Most people there to steal from the buffet have a bag. This guy didn't have a bag, thieves tendto go for less messy fare, and I could see as I worked that this guy was eating everything he'd gotten—tater tots by the handful, sweet potato skin and all in bites like an apple which, I mean, potato skins are edible. He finished both plates then got up, muttering to himself, to get more.

We get mentally ill folks in from time to time. Theirmoney's as green as anyone's and as long as they aren't violent or make my job unduly difficult, I don't care. Sometimes they're homeless, in which case they maybe haven't had a real meal in a while—I personally think they'd be better spending what little money they have somewhere like Burger King where you can get twenty chicken nuggets for a dollar, but that's their choice. Our food is moderately higher quality than Burger King.

Now, this guy didn't _look_ homeless, but not everyone who is does, and the muttering and the shifty eyes were definitely making me think mentally ill, so “crazy but probably harmless homeless guy” was my operating theory, here, at the four plates of food and one glass of soda mark.

I got him a refill, heard him say, “Yes, she _is_ pretty, don't change the subject.”

He got plates number five and six: mostly pizza and pasta salads. I went to clear the empty dishes—I know he'd gotten ribs and chicken wings but there weren't bones on any of the plates. Sure, some people take those home for their dogs, but I'd like to point out again that he did not have a bag with him, and he was only wearing jeans and a pretty flimsy, pocketless sweatshirt, there was nowhere for him to be hiding the bones. Nowhere.

When I got to the back, just kinda staring, perturbed, at the empty plates I was carrying, one of my coworkers caught me gently by the arm. “Hey, you okay?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I just could have sworn—it's nothing. I'm tired and losing it a little.”

She smiled understandingly and patted my shoulder as I passed, continuing to the dishwashing station. “This is what you get for working so many doubles!”

“I need the money!” I called back.

She laughed. “I know, and same, gurl, same.”

I checked my other tables, cleared some of their plates and got refills, keeping an eye on my crazy guy all the while. He paused midway through plate 7 to chug the rest of his Fanta, which obligated me to bring him another. I set the glass down quickly and hurried away from the table, trying not to interrupt his gnawing through a cob of corn like it was an apple core.

“ _ **Thank you**_.”

I froze—the voice was different. I'd heard him talk, and that wasn't what he sounded like. I turned slowly over my shoulder to look at him. I had to be imagining things.

“Sorry.” He was adjusting the hood of his sweatshirton one side. He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” I squeaked and scurried to the back.

A different coworker this time asked me if I was okay.

“Yeah, I—actually, no. Schizophrenia's not contagious, is it?”

He stared at me. “What? No.”

“Just making sure.”

Overhearing, my coworker from before joined us. “What's going on?”

I took a deep breath. “I'm either legitimately losing my mind, or there's something really weird going on with the guy in the green hoody at table six.”

They looked at me, then glanced at each other, then all three of usleaned around thekitchen door to peer out onto the floor. We watched this guy finish plate number eight (fish sticks, french fries, and fried shrimp), get up and come back with a bowl of chiliand a plate neatly stacked with a mountain of cornbread. He ate a cornbread whole then started drinking the chili. We ducked back inside the kitchen.

“Where's he putting it?” my fellow waitress asked breathlessly.

“I don't know!”

“Do you want me to take over the table?” my other coworker offered uncertainly.

“I mean, he's been perfectly polite, he's just...” I gestured vaguely, “like that. And he's been talking to himself. And,” I whispered, “I swear there's two voices.”

“Maybe he has multiple personality disorder?” the other waitress hedged. “Like that Shama-llama-man movie?”

Peeking around the corner, my other coworker said, “He's out of soda again.”

I sighed, grabbed a new cup, and filled it.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, just, if I die, take care of my cactus. Ashley, you get my cat.”

I went to bring table six his refill. He had one elbow propped on the table, face in that hand, one cornbread left on the plate in front of him. I slowed as I neared.

“I can't do it, bud,” he said forlornly to nothing. “I'll be sick. No, we are _not_ still hungry.”

An arm's breadth from his table, I saw _something_ dark and tongue like flick out from the vicinity of his neck and snag the remaining cornbread.

He sighed, rubbed at his eye, and mumbled, “No, we've talked about this, waitstaff _bring_ food, they are not food.”

I dropped his drink on the table—it sloshed—and took a hasty step back, staring. He looked up quickly. “I am so sorry,” he said earnestly. “You weren't supposed to hear that, I didn't realize—hey, we're not—no— _I'm_ not gonna eat you. Nobody is gonna eat you. I promise. I'm sorry.”

“I think you should leave, sir.”

“You know what,” he reached for a napkin to wipe his hands, “you're right.” He wiped his face, dropped the napkin into his empty chilibowl, and fished his wallet out of his pocket. “You're absolutely right. I should leave.”

He took out a few bills and held them out to me. I took another step back.

“Yeah, that's fair….” He dropped the money on the table carefully not in the puddle of spilled Fanta, picked up the soda, downed it, wiped his fingers off on his jeans, gave me a little nod with a tight smile, and headed out.

I watched him go. As he passed the dessert bar, more of the dark _somethings_ darted out of nowhere, out of him, to grab at least a dozen cookies and half a cheesecake. Even from behind and across the room I could tell he was rolling his eyes with exasperation. I blinked a few times and turned to face my coworkers, standing behind me, watching too, looking as blankly stunned as I felt.

“Did you guys just see…?”

“Yup.”

“Uhhuh.” Ashley glanced at me. “What was—?”

“I have no idea.”

I clocked out as soon as I could after that and took the next day off. Never saw that guy again, don't think I want to, but he did tip sixty, so if he ever does come back…. Well, I've had worse customers.


End file.
